Scars
by Luinia
Summary: She supposed that it was because they'd both seen such horrors in their lives that even the smallest of imperfections seemed like gifts.


**Disclaimer: FullMetal Alchemist doesn't belong to me :(**

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><p>"Riza?" He whispered, trudging through the box-ridded apartment. It had been about two months since the pair had decided to move in together and they still hadn't bothered to start unpacking his things; hers hadn't even been unpacked when he moved in and though Roy had convinced her to store away most of her possessions, he still found that when he got changed in the morning he'd look in a box before looking in an actual dresser for clothes.<p>

It was about midnight, the time that Roy was getting used to stumbling through the door at. It was a foreign concept for him, however, to think that there was someone waiting for him. He was fuehrer now and Riza had resigned from the military only a day after his induction. Things with their relationship had progressed normally from there, without any bothersome frat laws to deal with.

She had kept busy with various jobs, often bouncing back and forth and changing professions constantly. It was difficult for her to so suddenly change her life, and Roy realized that; he just wasn't always sure what he could do to make it easier on her. Currently, she was working as a seamstress; mathematics was always one of the things that came easily to her, though Roy thought that she owed it to the years of calculating trajectories with a rifle rather than schooling.

It was an odd choice, Roy thought, when he first heard about her decision. At first, he supposed that she was just trying to prove that she could be girly. Hell, he still thought that. There was no way in hell, he figured, that Riza Hawkeye would _enjoy _taking measurements for too-rich naive young girls who bought a new dress every other day.

Of course, as Riza had explained tirelessly to him, not every single girl who came looking for a dress was like that, and he'd ended the conversation there with a simplistic _If it makes you happy…_line.

He tiptoed into their bedroom and smiled to himself when he saw the covers ruffled around his girlfriend. Black Hayate snuggled into her chest lovingly, almost protectively. Roy chuckled at the small dog, patting him on the head. "Thanks for keeping her company, buddy," he mumbled in the darkness.

Roy began changing into his nightclothes, barely finding enough room to walk across the cluttered space. He found it very difficult to navigate through the mounds of boxes in the dark,

Once he was changed and figured he was in the clear, he went to snuggle next to his beloved when, with a deafening crash, his head collided with the wooden floor of their apartment.

The next thing he knew was that the light was on and Riza was awake, her brown eyes full of tiredness and anger; a gun clicked and pointed seriously at the raven colored mass of hair on the floor.

She relaxed slightly when the perpetrator began to sit up. "Oh," she said in a quiet voice, resting the gun on the beside table and offering him a hand, "it's just you." "We're you expecting someone else?" He asked with a smug smile, taking her hand and going to sit next to her on the bed. "We really need to clean this place up. This is the second time I've accidentally woken you up this week."

"So don't work so late," she said with a slight smile, leaning in to kiss him gently on the lips. It was a chaste kiss, one that Mustang recognized as what he liked to call 'The end-of-the-night-kiss' that rather clearly signified that all nighttime activities were postponed. Resisting the urge to groan, he smiled instead.

"Have you been waiting long?" He asked hesitantly.

Riza shrugged. "No," she responded with some sadness in her voice, managing to suppress the sigh that was working it's way up her throat.

"What's wrong?" He asked slowly, immediately picking up on her demeanor; she was hiding her emotions, as usual.

Riza sighed and shook her head quickly, holding up her hands to gesture that everything was just fine. "Oh, nothing to worry about. Just a…long day."

"Is that so?"

"Yep," she responded in a definitive nature. Moving towards the pile of boxes and away from her boyfriend, she rummaged through a stack that they kept their not-so-fond reminders of memories of the sadder events in their past in. Roy scratched his head as she pulled out a dress and hung it in the unoccupied armoire. "Madame Luffanger wants me to participate in the revealing of her new dress collection next week. As a model," she said in a mournful voice.

Roy smiled wryly. "You don't sound happy about it."

"Only because she was so disappointed when I turned her down."

The alchemist wasn't quite so sure where to go from there. He choked down a yawn and took a deep breath. "Are her clothes really that awful?"

"No, no," she responded in a soft voice, "just backless."

The gravity of what she'd said hit Roy like a ton of bricks. It wasn't like her to mention her tattoo; she felt as if it was a small part of the price she ought to pay for what happened in Ishbal. The fact that _she, _Riza Hawkeye, of all people, would mention this tiny detail meant a great deal.

"Come here," Roy said in a demanding voice. He knew what she needed. Riza was helpless to do anything but listen to his demands. Sitting on the bed beside him, he pressed her shoulders to the mattress.

"Roy? What are you-"

"Lie down," he commanded. Riza eyed him wryly. "Don't you trust me?" He asked her needlessly. She nodded quickly. Of course she trusted him; she'd been entrusting her back to him for about a decade.

So Riza did. Roy straddled her, running his hands up her calf and pressing his lips to her right knee. "Do you remember how you got this?" He whispered.

The blonde shook her head. "I must've been really little-"

"It was the first time we played as children," he told her. "I was twelve and you were nine. We were playing tag and you tripped over the root of our oak tree in the backyard." "It isn't _our _oak tree-"

Roy stopped her by picking up her left hand in his. "Do you remember how you got _this?" _He asked her gently.

Riza nodded at the deep scar left by a knife that she'd received when she was fifteen. "We were carving our names into the oak tree and I slipped," she said with a laugh. "You left for the academy the next day," she told him with a sadness in her voice. "I guess that _does _make it our tree."

Roy smiled knowingly and nodded. His lips moved towards her neck, kissing along the thin white line that had formed when one of the prospective fuehrer's had sliced her neck as a temptation into getting Roy to perform human transmutation. "I love this one," he whispered.

"Why?" Riza asked in a startled voice. "It's not exactly dainty."

He chuckled. "Every time I see it, I think about how lucky I am," he told her. "I almost lost you."

Blood rushed in the blonde's cheeks. "You're really corny, do you know that, Colonel?" He grinned cockily. "That's _fuehrer _to you, Hawkeye."

Riza smirked and kissed him full on the lips. She loved this side of him; the kind that could make anything that was terrible seem like a blessing. She supposed that it was because they'd both seen such horrors in their lives that even the smallest of imperfections seemed like gifts.

Roy pulled away from the kiss. "We aren't done," he whispered. "On your stomach," he growled.

Riza hesitated. "No."

He kissed her again, prodding. It was Riza this time who pulled back. It was a hard thing to do; he was a fantastic kisser. "Please?" Was the gentle murmur that had her at his beck and whim.

The blonde hesitantly rolled onto her stomach, biting her lip. Roy trailed his cold hands across her back and as he chuckled gently. Riza shivered. He swiftly pulled her nightshirt over her head and let it flow into a satiny pool on the wooden floor.

"This is my favorite," he whispered.

"Why?" She asked. "It's only ever brought pain," she said in a soft voice. Roy inhaled sharply; he knew not to take it as a personal attack.

"Because it's mine," he told her. "No one's seen it besides me, you and your father. It's beautiful, Riza. Just like you."

"It isn't beautiful. It's monstrous."

Roy was silent for a moment. Riza turned to him, tears in her eyes and wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders. "There isn't anything beautiful about what happened in Ishbal," she whispered.

"No, there isn't," he told her, dropping his body so that he was laying across from her in the bed, still holding her to his chest. "But it's over now. That tattoo's a reminder of the awful things we've done, and a reminder of our goals. We're going to make things right, you know that? Who knows? Maybe Ishbal will try and rival _your _beauty one day."

"Beauty?" She asked, letting the foreign word drip off of her tongue. Riza looked doubtful.

"Yes," he whispered, a smug smirk on his face as he leaned down to kiss her fully on the lips. "Do I need to prove it to you?"


End file.
